The FIFA Master is a unique 10-month sport (and not solely football...) Master programme, initiated by FIFA, coordinated by CIES, and taught by three prestigious European universities: De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan, IT) and Neuchatel University (Neuchatel, CH), in association with the Università della Svizzera italiana.
.JPG)
Why have you decided to attend the FIFA/CIES program for Sports Managers?
In the last three years I have turned from being a simple Sports’ Coach to a manager of a National Office with the responsibility to additionally supervise and coordinate other five African offices of a sport for development NGO (Play Soccer). As part of my job, I had the responsibility to manage the different resources of the organization and to exercise the management functions but without really having an academic background to do so. This is why I felt that I needed to learn more about management, so when the opportunity arose, I grabbed it with both hands, and so far I can say that I’m learning lots of things that are not only useful, but that are also making me feel like a more confident and capable manager.
What challenges are you facing in attending such a program?
The biggest challenge is time. I work fulltime and sometimes I have limited time to really focus on my studies. It is also the first time I am part of a long distance education program and this poses some challenges, since more discipline is needed to achieve goals.
What attributes does this program have for you?
I am “putting theory” to a lot of things that I learnt in a practical way during the last three years. Consequently, this course can be extremely beneficial for my current and future sports management career. Moreover, learning about financial management and strategic planning, for example, is something that is also useful for my life in general, not only at the professional level.
Can you already use some of the theoretical aspects of the program in your professional life? For example?
I am currently studying Business Management and Financial Management. Out of these two modules, some learning objectives are already really useful:
- The importance of setting up a Mission and Vision and the importance that this has for the organization’s success:
- the steps of the planning process.
- financial management principles, and how finance is an important evaluation tool to track the organization’s development and usage of funds.
Would you recommend this course? Why?
I would certainly recommend it to many of my colleagues that manage sport for development projects at national level, but also to the ones that work at community level. The modules in this course include topics that are useful to any manager.
CIES (International Centre for Sports Studies), located in Neuchatel, is a private Swiss foundation, affiliated with the University of Neuchatel and created in 1995 by FIFA (under the impetus of its current president, Mr. Joseph S. Blatter), the University of Neuchatel, and the City and Canton of Neuchatel.
CIES specialises in three specific domains: law, sociology and economy of sport, with a view to bring together the sporting and the academic worlds. Privileging a pluri-disciplinary approach, CIES provides a wide range of research, education and consultancy services.